DIABELLI VARIATIONS: IT'S FULL OF STARS

Listening to the Diabelli variations straight through is like launching from earth, journeying into space and eventually passing out of the universe altogether. The first theme and the initial few variations are almost laughably bombastic, but the theme gradually shrinks in relation to the overall soundscape or just the "feelingness" of the set... By Var. X it's "OK, yeah, this is fairly clever. Maybe there's more to this." By Var. XX it's "this is jaw-droppingly sublime, " and the overwhelming vastness of space kicks in. From Var. XXIX through XXXI the original theme's become this little blip journeying to the edge of the universe. Then you have the sudden, shocking XXXII fugue striking like the edge of the universe and the blip goes into some kind of polyphonic/transdimensional journey Space Odyssey style. Then there's the finale XXIII. And the original theme's prominent -- but fundamentally altered. It returns the theme to a concrete reality, but in this ethereal, transcendent, starchild kind of way. So, basically, Space Odyssey is a ripoff of the Diabelli variations. All that, from this silly little line by Diabelli.